Bruiser....my true love

Ok, I admit it....much as I tried not to, I had a favorite dog. I blogged once about how I ultimately ended up with three Jack Russel Terriers when I simply wanted 'a dog'. My three boys were Bruiser, Spike and Skippy.



Skippy, Bruiser and Spike.....Bruiser was usually in the middle of everything.

When we first got the dogs, we got three because there were three of us and in Jim's mind, we each needed our own dog. Ultimately to the animal, ownership means nothing, and I knew that at the time, but because Jim had conceded and let me have a dog, I was not about to argue that point with him. So when he decided we needed to pair up each dog with one of us, I went along with it (in theory.)

I think I showed a bit of favoritism when I first saw the puppies because Bruiser had the most color on him and I thought he was very handsome. So Jim assumed I wanted Bruiser but when he said we each had to choose one, I, trying NOT to play favorites right away, said it didnt' matter to me, so he took Bruiser. Try as he might, Jim never quite convinced Bruiser that I was not 'daddy', and from the get-go, Bruiser followed me around like a.....well like a puppy. I ended up with Spike as my dog and Skippy as George's dog. (And like I said, to all of them, they belonged to me....they adore(d) George but it was me that they respected and looked to for everything.)

Bruiser was scared of me because I was the disciplinarian and he was incredibly sensitive.....but Bruiser was my constant companion. He was the biggest of the three and pushier to both the food and attention. It's hard not to play favorites when one is always there at your side.....and Bruiser was always there. I sat down and he was immediately in my lap. In the mornings at the kitchen table Bruiser hopped up in my arms and flopped over upside down on his back while I held him....ears flapping towards the ground. That dog would sometimes fall asleep in that position as I read the paper and absent-mindedly petted him.

Directly at my side as usual.....


His usual spot....and stop looking at my fat thigh!!!!


Bruiser was quirky. At one point when he was about 2 years old, he suddenly decided that he was no longer going to sleep in bed at night with us. He would stay in bed till just before the lights went out, then would jump off and sleep on a nearbye chair. No amount of coaxing would keep him in that bed and he'd shake like he was terrified if we tried. If I was home during the day, he'd sleep on the bed with me anytime....but at night, forget it. (I think I finally realized a few years later I must've inadvertantly rolled over and hit him in the middle of the night and scared him silly.)

When George and I moved out on our own, Bruiser still wouldn't sleep in bed at night. But he developed in the last few years one of the most endearing things I've ever heard an animal do. He went to bed with us at night when the lights went off and would stay for awhile. He would snuggle up next to me with his rear in my armpit and my arm resting on him. I would fall asleep with him there and as SOON as I was asleep, he'd be off the bed. I fall asleep extremely quickly and George told me he was usually still awake when Bruiser left, but I would never see it. I think he waited until my breathing changed to sleep breathing, then would leave.


All I knew was that every night he snuggled up with me as I went to sleep and brought me a sense of peace, calm and love each night.


Bruiser was not a brainy boy....Spike got all the brains in the family. Instead, Bruiser got the heart.....he had a huge heart and I loved him deeply....I still do. I'm writing about him today partially because on my walk with Skippy this morning, my thoughts, as they often do, drifted to Bruiser and I started to cry because I missed him so much. When I think about him now, the thoughts are all about how wonderful he was, but they also go directly to how much I still miss him.

When he died (3 1/2 years ago now) he left an empty spot in my heart and at my side, literally. I very quickly realized that as we watched TV at night sitting on the bed, Bruiser had always been at my side, with Skippy closer to my knees and Spike towards my feet. When Bruiser died, the other two refused to take his spot....and stayed exactly where they were when he was alive. I'd pull Spike up next to me, and he would be totally uncomfortable there (despite being very sweet himself) and would move back to my feet and leave my side empty. Skippy did the same. Three years later and Skippy still refuses to sit at my side. It's as if they both simply knew that Bruiser belonged there and always would. As much as I loved Spike and still love Skippy....they were right.

Bruiser was my favorite and I don't think I'll ever stop missing him. He captured my heart by giving me his. (and I'm bawling like a baby yet again right now.)

Spike's Boys....my first blog

Ok, I've been doing Spike's Boys for more than a year now, and often wondered if I should also write more.....I've injected a comment or two, but largely have not offered any opinions and have attempted not to clutter it up with text. That blog was started for two reasons.



First, my wonderful dog, Spike, had just recently been diagnosed with bladder cancer.....I was sitting around one day feeling wistful about Spike and looking for something to do on the computer.

Here's Spike

Second, I'd heard about this 'blog' phenonmenon, but really hadn't paid it that much attention, so I decided to poke around to see what was out there. Largely, what I found sort of bored me....musings from a lot of people that I didn't know or care about. I found several that were basically diaries, and a few that were people going through a trauma of their own, and writing about it for their own purposes....and to help anyone else who might happen upon it. I also found others that were about specific subjects, such as a particular TV show, sports, Brad Pitt, etc.


So on the spot, I decided a few things. I would start up a blog to learn how to do it and see if it's something that amused me enough to keep it up, would pick a subject that is easy to keep going, and I would dedicate it to Spike.



So....what interests me....what do I do mostly when I'm poking around on the net. Look for cute guys. I had a fairly sizable folder of pictures and porn I'd found on the net one way or another. Mostly I used it as a screensaver for my computer screens. So for my blog subject, I picked essentially, pictures of men. I hesitate to call it porn because if you spend any time on Spike's Boys, you'll see that there is not a ton of nudity or gratuitous sex. Oh, it's definitely there, but it is not my focus. My focus for that blog is simply men that I find extremely attractive in one way or another. It can be an Arm muscle, a face, something they are wearing, or just a gorgeous man. Each posting is themed to whatever amuses me that day, and I picked the overall theme of 'boys' to tie it together.


The theme of 'boys' has limited me a bit because I put that into the title of each posting, and coming up with new clever ones isn't easy. But I do my best to keep it interesting for myself, and now for others since some people seem to enjoy visiting (have had about 150k hits at this point.)

More limiting than the theme though was organization over time. I've now done about 125 postings in the last year and two months, and each posting is 15 pictures (blogspot lets you upload 5 at a time, and that seemed like a good number.) That's approaching 2000 pictures and I've done my best not to repeat. That became harder and harder over time, so now I'm in the process of moving my pics on my computer into 'used' subdirectories. I do a ton of surfing for new pics all the time, and I keep them somewhat organized by categorizing them as I find them into a subdirectory structure similar to the blog. That organization started when I started the blog (I already had several hundred pictures before starting it, all unorganized.)

Geez, I'm already boring MYSELF....

Ok, so who is Spike? To know Spike and his brothers, you have to hear a bit of history of me. I'm a 47 year-old gay man who has never truly been comfortable with himself. I'm sure I'll tell more of this another time, but essentially, when I was 29, I met two guys that had been a couple for 10 years, Jim and George. Eventually we started a threesome which lasted another 7 years before George and I split off on our own.

Jim and I started as friends and he did a lot for me as a person, but we had a terrible time because he brought out the arguer in me for some reason. By nature, I'm not argumentative at all, but for some reason, he and I fought like cats and dogs (and I almost never won an argument because he's GOOD at it.) For our first three years, I essentially moved into their place, and in 1994, we decided to buy a place together, all three of us. I grew up with dogs and was absolutely insistant that I WOULD have one when I owned a place. Jim was dead set against having a dog in the house. We knew it was an issue....but we proceeded anyway.

Fast forward to about a month before closing on the house we found on Capital Hill. We had an ornery owner to deal with....all of us were in the house together and the owner was being an Ass about something....and the next thing I know, Jim is gone from the house, out the front door. About 30 minutes later, he comes running into the house saying 'oh you have to come see the puppies!!!' He had noticed the new next door neighbor in the yard and went out to talk to him. The neighbor's Jack Russell had recently had puppies, so he invited Jim in to see them, and Jim fell in love. Next thing I know, Jim is insisting that we EACH had to have a puppy....lol. 'Oh, three is no harder than one!', he tells us. (He can rationalize absolutely anything in his head.) Well, I had just averted a very difficult argument, so I went along because I was going to have my dog.

Spike Bruiser and Skippy



Well, as these things happen, I got three dogs as I have always been their primary caretaker and disciplinarian.

So of course, we had to decide on names for our three new puppies (we were only assured of two of the 5 as they were keeping one (Scamp), one was definitely spoken for (Nardo....the long lost brother as we never saw him again) and a third was possibly taken....but we ended up with three of them living next door to their mother (Lady) and brother. We wanted a theme for the names....Hewey, Dewey and Louis or something silly, without being silly...lol. Finally we decided that since Jack Russell Terriers are little dogs who don't have a clue that they are little, we'd use big names, and decided on Butch, Spike and Killer.

Well, the first one born was the biggest and the first one to push his brothers aside (yes, she had 5 boys) to get to the milk.....he was a baby bully and the owners named him first, and called him Bruiser. Well, that fit the theme just great, so it became Bruiser, Spike and Killer.

Jim being Jim, decided that each of us owned only one of them, and somehow it became Jim owns Bruiser, I own Spike, and Killer belonged to George. George is the world's sweetest person (I'm sure I'll have more on him later), and just couldn't call that dog, who was the runt of the litter, Killer. After 2-3 weeks of waffling, I finally said, 'ok the dog needs a name, if you can't call him Killer than NAME HIM SOMETHING.'....and George says, ok, lets name him Skippy.

Well, thank you very much for ruining our THEME! But he was right, Skippy turned out to be more of a Skippy and he grew into the name. Killer would've been all wrong, and it makes for a good story :).

These dogs are truly special to us and I'm sure I'll write more about them at another time. As a gay man with no children, my animals become my children. I also have two cats, Rachi (pronounced Rocky and short for Rachmaninov) and Copeland.